BURN and Environmental Commodity Partners (ECP) are pleased to announce a new collaboration to expand access to clean cooking technologies to families in Kenya. BURN, the world's largest vertically integrated, modern cookstove manufacturer in sub-Saharan Africa will manufacture, deliver, and rigorously monitor its world class efficient biomass stoves. ECP, a global investor in high quality carbon emissions reduction projects is providing a funding package that will subsidize 170,000 stoves to make them accessible to lower income Kenyans.
BURN manufactures the world’s most fuel efficient and durable biomass cookstoves, as well as a portfolio of LPG and electric cookstoves, all aimed at reducing carbon emissions from household cooking. Over the last 12 years, BURN has built a successful business while proving that cookstoves can deliver transformative social, financial, and environmental benefits. BURN stoves have positively impacted the lives of more than 11 million people around the world, saving consumers over $480 million in household fuel costs while preventing over 6 million tons of wood consumption. BURN’s facility in Nairobi, Kenya, has existing cookstove production capacity of 3 million per year, and is on track to produce 12 million per year by 2024.
ECP is a California based global asset manager specialising exclusively in emissions markets and high-integrity carbon projects. The firm was founded in 2017 and invests across a broad spectrum of environmental commodity markets and high-quality decarbonization projects around the world.
“BURN has accomplished something nobody in the clean cooking world anticipated ten years ago: they’ve built a world-leading manufacturing facility in Nairobi capable of supplying a large fraction of the world’s clean cooking needs,” said Blake Schaefer, founding Partner at ECP. “We are very pleased to partner with BURN to invest in providing access to these stoves for people who could not otherwise afford them.”
“We will continue in our quest to save lives and forests through our clean cooking revolution, and the support of partners and investors like ECP is critical to achieving our mission” said Peter Scott, BURN’s CEO, re-iterating BURN’s continued commitment to providing world-class, clean cooking technology to families the world.
The importance of projects like these cannot be overstated as an estimated 81% of sub-Saharan Africa still relies on inefficient biomass stoves for cooking, causing significant damage to the continent’s forests and the health of households.